The Fermi Summer School emphasizes the analysis of data from the Fermi instruments through lectures and hands-on workshops. Students spend time working directly with experts in instrumentation, analysis, theory and modeling to develop and extend their own research projects. Topics cover much of the gamma-ray band ranging from keV-MeV transients seen with Fermi's GBM to the highest energies observed by the LAT and the very high energies observed by ground-based gamma-ray telescopes. This year's school will be held at the University of Delaware Conference Center in Lewes, Delaware, from May 31 to June 10, 2022.
Material will be aimed at graduate students and post-doctoral researchers. Topics will include particle acceleration and gamma-ray production mechanisms; space-based and ground-based gamma-ray instrumentation; spectral, spatial, and time-based analysis of gamma-ray data; modeling and interpretation of gamma-ray data; and astrophysical source classes such as AGN, GRBs, Galactic pulsars and binary systems, supernova remnants, and pulsar wind nebulae as well as searches for dark matter and new physics.
The software necessary for the tutorials (such as the Fermitools) are distributed in the FermiBottle Docker Container, a fully-functional, self-contained analysis environment. Please go through the Summer School Checklist to make sure the container is functioning correctly.
On this page
Schedule
Go directly to Week 1 or Week 2. All times are in Eastern Daylight Time (UTC−04:00).
See our Code of Conduct and our COVID guidelines.
Week 1
| Tues, May 31 | Wed, June 1 | Thurs, June 2 | Fri, June 3 | Sat, June 4 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8:00 | Breakfast | Breakfast | Breakfast | Breakfast | Breakfast |
| 9:00 | Welcome and Introductions - Liz, Jamie + | Intro to Fermi LAT - Liz | Modern Blazar Problems: Multiwavelength & Multimessenger - Tiffany Lewis | Science with Fermi GBM - Cori | Science with Fermi LAT Pulsars - Matthew |
| 10:00 | Intro to the Fermi Mission and Sky - Liz Hays | Intro to Fermi GBM - Cori Fletcher | Neutron Stars and Gravitational Waves (GW) - Cecilia Chirenti | Future MeV observations and AMEGO-X - Henrike Fleischhack | BurstCube, a cubesat to detect GW counterparts - Jeremy Perkins |
| 11:00 | Break | Break | Break | Break (Photo!) | Break |
| 11:30 | Blazar Basics: Background & Time Series - Tiffany Lewis | Intro to Likelihood - Matthew Kerr | Neutron Stars and Gravitational Waves Part II - Cecilia Chirenti | Student Talks / 1 Slide Summaries | |
| 12:30 | Lunch | Lunch | Lunch | Lunch | Lunch |
| 1:30 | Getting started with Fermi: Tools and Resources - Joe Eggen, Joe Asercion, Alex Reustle (remote), Nestor Mirabal (remote), Don Horner (remote) | Getting Started with Likelihood Analysis - Liz, Joe, Matthew FermiSummerSchool Github link - see read.me for instructions to download files for the analysis | Intro to git and Github - Henrike Fleischhack Next Steps with Likelihood - Liz, Matthew, Jeremy Perkins Special guest Cole Miller (See his course on practical astrostatistics) Optional breakout: Fermitools advanced installation - Joe A. | Advanced Likelihood - Liz, Matthew, Jeremy Time to work on Student Projects Optional breakouts: Pulsar timing - Matthew; Multimission fitting with 3ML - Henrike | Advanced Tutorials (Lightcurves and upper limits) - Liz, Jeremy Student Projects A PSF-based method for LAT Data Model comparisons |
| 4:45 | End of the Day Tag-up | End of the Day Tag-up | End of the Day Tag-up | End of the Day Tag-up | End of the Day Tag-up |
| Crab Feast TBD |
Week 2
| Mon, June 6 | Tues, June 7 | Wed, June 8 | Thurs, June 9 | Fri, June 10 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8:00 | Breakfast | Breakfast | Breakfast | Breakfast | Breakfast |
| 9:00 | Gamma-ray Binaries - Jamie Holder | Neutrinos associated with TXS 0506+056 - Joshua Wood | Photon Adventure - Amy Furniss | TeV Ground-based Astronomy - Amy | Final wrap-up items and packing up |
| 10:00 | Ground-based Gamma-ray Astronomy with HAWC - Henrike | Gamma-ray burst science from Multimessenger observations - Judy | Student Talks / 1 Slide Summaries | Fermi LAT Catalog Analysis - Jean Ballet (remote) | Project Results and Feedback (All) |
| 11:00 | Break | Break | Break | Break | Break |
| 11:30 | Student Talks / 1 Slide Summaries | Impostor Syndrome workshop - Amy | Student Talks / 1 Slide Summaries | Workshop Close Out | |
| 12:30 | Lunch | Lunch | Lunch | Lunch | Lunch |
| 1:30 | GBM Tutorial - Joshua Wood Student Projects | Free Afternoon (may trade with Mon or Wed) | GBM tutorial follow up/ Accounting for trials - Josh | Advanced topics: Systematics and validation checks - Liz, Henrike, Judy | |
| 4:45 | End of the Day Tag-up | End of the Day Tag-up | End of the Day Tag-up | ||
Student Talks and 1 Slide Summary Schedule
Friday, June 3
- Saqqib Hussain
- Nick Kirschner
Saturday, June 4
Monday, June 6
- Saeeda Sajjad
Tuesday, June 7
- Oskar Svenborn
Wednesday, June 8
Thursday, June 9
Supporting Material
- Primary announcements will be sent out via an e-mail list.
- Secondary announcements, interaction between sessions. instructor-student, and student-student communication will be handled via Slack. Instructions on joining the Summer School Slack will be sent to attendees by e-mail.
- This confluence page will be the home for the schedule as well as the presentation and supporting materials.
- There are a number of video tutorials for Fermi data analysis already available. You can also find tutorials posted on the SSC web page Data Analysis area.
Interesting repositories for Fermi analysis
- https://github.com/fermi-lat/FermiBottle/wiki - a fully-functional, self-contained analysis environment used in the Summer School
- https://github.com/FermiSummerSchool/fermi-summer-school - repository for iPython notebooks used during the Summer School
- https://github.com/fermiPy/ and documentation at http://fermipy.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
Stay up-to-date with the gamma-ray sky
- https://fermi.gsfc.nasa.gov/ssc/data/access/ - Catalogs and lightcurve products in addition to links to data archives
- Public List of LAT-Detected Gamma-Ray Pulsars - Updated list of confirmed gamma-ray pulsars. Timing models can be found at the FSSC data access website (previous link)
- https://fermi.gsfc.nasa.gov/ssc/library/pubs/ - Find Fermi publications
- https://www-glast.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/pubpub - Fermi-LAT publications page
- https://www-glast.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/pub_rapid - List of rapid communications from the LAT team
- https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/W3Browse/fermi/fermigbrst.html - Table of Fermi GBM gamma-ray bursts
- https://gcn.gsfc.nasa.gov/fermi_grbs.html - Fermi Gamma-ray Coordinates Network (GCN) notices
Additional Resources for gamma-ray astronomy and astrostatistics
Things to Do in Lewes
- Take the ferry to Cape May.
- Hire kayaks (Don't forget sun screen!).
- If the weather's good, go to the beach! Lewes Beach is fine, or there's a beach on the ocean-side in Cape Henlopen State Park. (Don't forget sun screen!)
- Visit Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge (Don't forget bug repellent)
- Visit the Zwaanendael Museum
- Visit the US Lightship Overfalls (located just off of Pilottown Rd):
- Biking and hiking trails